"Oh, they were 6 or 7, old enough to be in school, so they knew what they were talking about. The complex storytelling was beyond me, but the beats and the stance affected me right away."

His parents were less than pleased.

"They struggled with it, especially in my early teens and went through periods where they refused to have it in the house, but they finally decided it was a fad. My dad said, 'You're not going to want to listen to that curse music when you grow up.' Well, I'm grown up and I'm still listening."

Because hip-hop starts at home, the show takes place in what looks like a typical teen's bedroom, assuming the teen in question has freedom of choice in matters of decor, astute taste and connected friends.

Tip-top hip-hop paintings (and hip-hop influenced drawings) anchor the walls, along with bits of graffiti, local posters, decals and fliers. There are turntables for the aspiring DJ, along with boom boxes, tapes featuring local break dancing crews, oral histories on head phones, spray-painted clothing and video footage of local concerts.

This small gallery disguised as a cool bedroom is not too cool for toys. Action figures line the bookcases, heavy on the transformers, because hip-hop is always about improvisational transformation.

"This show grew out of the ideas of our advisory council, comprised of members from all parts of the local hip-hop community," he said. "We were interested in the intimate end of hip-hop and wanted to examine how teens might take its disparate elements and tailor them to their own experience, staking a personal claim. We commissioned the paintings, but everything else in here was donated by people who participated in making it," he said.

Even though rap has transformed the hip-hop phenomenon into a $5 billion industry worldwide, Quibuyen sees rap stars as just one element in a complex cultural force that is personal for everyone who is part of it.

Two participants dropped by to help while Quibuyen was setting up: brothers Darvin and Hovin Vida. In their 20s, both have moved into hip-hop graphic design after teen years as graffiti artists.

"Looks good, George," said Darvin. "It's cozy. The carpet could be a problem. It's too clean."

His brother grinned. "We could fix that," he offered.

Both paint break dancers, among other things. Darvin's figure is a blue-footed force field, and his younger brother's is a fluid red metaphor for hard-earned grace. Both pay tribute in their art to hip-hoppers who change lives without becoming wealthy stars.

"Beneath the surface of Top-40 radio hits and the media's infatuation with hip-hop's negative images of gangsters, drugs and violence, are communities bound together by hip-hop's positive spirit of artistic innovation, rebellion against oppression and embracing a lifestyle alternate to the destructive gang life," Quibuyen wrote in his introductory exhibit essay.

Obviously, an Asian museum is going to concentrate on Asian contributions, but isn't hip-hop largely a black phenomenon?

"It grew out of black and Latino cultures," Quibuyen said. "Asian hip-hop respectfully acknowledges that we're working from that base. We improvise from that and bring something of our own perspective. For a long time we were seen as a novelty. In Seattle, though, Asians had roots in hip-hop right from the beginning."

Nestor Rodriguez (Nasty Nes) arrived in Seattle from the Philippines and picked up on hip-hop in his Yesler Terrace neighborhood. "He established Rap Attack, the first all hip-hop radio show on the West Coast in 1980. After that, there was no question that a Filipino could rock the turntables as well as the next man."

During Quibuyen's teen years, he noticed that break dance crews tended to be isolated by race. "In the 1990s, they'd all get together and go up against each other, but mixed race crews were unusual. Now, they're common."

Best known on the current scene is probably the multiethnic Massive Monkees, which also breaks the sex barrier with female members.

An MC himself, Quibuyen thinks hip-hop's the place where society is most free to work out its racial and class tensions, to break barriers and forge a new understanding.

"Racism is still there, less for the breakers than the rappers, but it crops up." Last year at a MC battle at the University of Washington, a white MC from Chicago was going up against an Asian MC from Seattle, said Quibuyen, and the white MC spewed out all kinds of anti-Asian stereotypes.

"He even used the word chink. He went after the masculinity of Asian males, that we're geeky and good at math and not creative. He piled it on, and the crowd loved it. I was offended for sure, but that's the exception these days. In battles, MC's are supposed to be able to say whatever they want, but him wanting to say those things meant his consciousness was on a pretty low level."

Hip-hoppers can be insular, offended when outsiders use their language. "I've done that, and I've been wrong," said Quibuyen. "There's a fine line when you appropriate from other cultures. Is it organic or a novelty?"

The curator remembers making assumptions about a white 40-year-old talking in a hip-hop style.

"I thought he was fake, and he wasn't. He was there in the beginning in New York and was still involved. I was judging him by his appearance, doing what's been done to me."

At this point, there are hip-hop lawyers and doctors, he said. "It's impossible to say right away who is and who isn't real. There are businessmen in suits who are hip-hop to their cores. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger."

Aug. 15, in honor of "It's Like That," the Wing Luke Museum is throwing a hip-hop party at Experience Music Project, featuring New York's Kuttin Kandi and local DJs ChinkyEye and Vanzai. You have to be 18 to get in, but on Aug. 22 at 8 p.m. at the Nippon Kan Theatre, Quibuyen is MC with guests, all ages, $5 at the door.